


I swear it's like dying to catch a ghost

by clytemnestras



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: AU, Drug Use, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 03:23:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11842950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/clytemnestras
Summary: Spring keeps you ever-close,you are second-hand smokeyou're so fragile and thin,standing trial for your sins





	I swear it's like dying to catch a ghost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [happyg_rl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/happyg_rl/gifts), [kwritten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/gifts).



> taking Very broad strokes with canon since it's been almost two years since I read aftg. au through the first half of the first book, with Andrew eyeing Neil up skeptically and wanting to swallow him whole. post-the raven cycle.
> 
> as per kwritten's prompt:
> 
> im scared of thunder  
> and of not being good enough for jesus  
> even though we dont talk anymore.  
> me and jesus hanging out on the pavement  
> jaywalking  
> loitering  
> pickpocketing  
> casual crime buddies and small change children  
> when i shivered and he gave me his jacket  
> when he bit his lip and said he didnt know what to do with me  
> and i told him i didnt know what to do with me, either

  
  


The smoke swelling in his lungs used to leave a sense of fullness before it dissipated. Andrew lies back on the roof with the dark rising in the edge of his vision and let's all the sound swallow him whole. 

 

He can make out the shriek of Allison hurtling across the pitch, angry and hungry and vicious to match Kevin's snarls. Some days she ricochets against the rest of them like she wants to snap her neck and smirks as she does it. Andrew inhales and muses darkly that he would entertain the wish if she asked.

 

He picks out other sounds. Dan and her attack whistle of a voice. Every cacophonic beat of Nicky's laughter swallowing up the softer sounds of the new kid. Neil. 

 

_ (Not Neil.) _

 

( _ Whatever he is, sunken eyes like blood drops gouged a blanket of snow and hands that quiver at the wrong times, more anxious in the hush than the storm _ .)

 

There are weeds growing in the edges of the concrete that weren't there yesterday and when he's still it feels almost as though they are reaching up toward him, pulling him into the foundations.

 

It's early but there is no reason to be awake. He feels around for his hip flask and fades into each grey cloud of smoke he sends to the sky.

 

*

 

Every day when he wakes up what he has is his hands, every cut, bruise, and callous, every rough edge of skin that flakes off and grows back hard.

 

He has his hands and in his hands a round little pill blue like the sky isn't that tastes like placebo on his tongue and like a dreamless abyss in the pit of his stomach. He sips vodka, not to wash it down but to taste something burning. It's dark but early and he has two options to sate the itch under his skin: Renee’s fists or Kevin's racquet.

 

He takes a third.

 

Andrew gets out silently, and though Nicky does not stir Aaron opens his eyes and draws his mouth into a tight line, pointedly not saying a word. Andrew raises a finger to his lips, and it might be funny, but his eyes are dark as the gloom that swells around them. 

 

It’s 3:30 and he has maybe a good hour left to disappear into.

 

The night feels good on his skin but the bass hammering through the club feels better. Uncaged but still boxed in enough that he doesn't feel like he's running feral.

 

(He disturbs himself with his domestication, sometimes. Palmetto is a worse sedative than the drugs.)

 

Christian catches him before he can fade into the floor. His eyes never drift far from Andrew’s hands when he speaks. “You here alone?”

 

He nods once. Doesn't say that if he had to wrestle another bottle of vodka out of Kevin's hands he would break it over his skull. Doesn't say that it's one of those days where he's halfway to throwing Aaron in front of a moving vehicle.

 

Doesn't say Nicky is Nicky and blood is blood but any night where he doesn't want to sever the kid’s vocal chords is a night where one or both of them have their hands fisted in someone's hair.

 

“You looking for a little stress relief?” Christian’s hand absently touches his throat, eyes still making their way across the slopes of Andrew's knuckles. 

 

“What are you offering?” There's an atmosphere change tonight. Something crawling under his skin, making him aware of every ounce of blood in his body. 

 

“Got some new pills,” Christian says. “New dealer. MD with no comedown.  _ Just like magic _ , he says.”

 

Andrew smiles at him, twists his fingers into his belt loops. “Anything else?” 

 

Christian swallows and fidgets a moment too long for Andrew’s patience. “This new alchemist of yours still here?”

 

(He is still counting out the beats of the music in his head, counting like hits landed by Renée's small fists, balls missed by Kevin's drunken sway on a bad night. He taps his finger accordingly against the pocket of his jeans.)

 

“Yeah,” Christian says absently, nodding over to the bar. “Said he wanted to scope out the place. Boss let him know we had plenty of room.” He tries to catch Andrew's eye, his tongue poking out to wet his lips, but Andrew is past entertaining it tonight.

 

“Introduce us?” 

 

It's easy to play upon his reputation, knowing what it means to which people. Christian flushes at the hint of a smile Andrew throws his way and leads him through the restless crowd.

 

It's hard to say what he was expecting. People are pretty much all the same, gaunt eyes and hunger pangs and clothes too expensive for the fragile skin they cover. 

 

The dark-eyed boy looking at him with an impassive line to his cruel mouth like the one Andrew tried for years to scrub off until his body grew to fit is nothing like that at all. He is something he has no pattern for. 

 

(The snap of electricity in the air seems to swell then fall with a whimper.)

 

Andrew studies him for far too long. “So you're our famed magician,” he says, gaze settling on his hands because Christian might not hold his interest but he certainly knows which places others hide their secrets in.

 

“No,” the boys says, lifting his hands to rest behind his head, forcing Andrew's eyes up and up, enunciating the difference in stature. "Not quite a magician. And warlock just sounds so gradeschool novel, right?”

 

Andrew’s jaw ticks and he does not bite. The boy’s hands are not smooth but worn down by something manual and the shadows under his eyes let him linger in the gulf between ageless and ancient, but the sway of his shoulders are loose enough to betray him. “How does someone so young end up in a place like this?”

 

The boy grins at him, exposing as many teeth as possible. “I’m as old as Christ.” He holds out one calloused hand, “I’m Ronan.” 

 

Andrew takes his hand but doesn't shake, just grips it for a moment, lets them both test each other's strength and drops it just as quickly. “Andrew,” he offers back. “Now tell me about this magic.”

 

“It came to me in a dream,” Ronan says, procuring a small bag from within his sleeve. He leans in close, close enough for his breath to touch warmly on the shell of Andrew's ear. Close enough for his hand to creep into Andrew's pocket. Andrew wraps his hand around Ronan's wrist but all he does is laugh softly. “They work with intent. Whatever you want them to do they'll do. Wake you up, light up the world into new colours you can't even imagine, or drag you down into eternal, restful sleep. Clap your hands if you believe.”

 

Andrew lets go. “And if I don't believe?”

 

“You'll start to soon.” Ronan turns away with a very fleeting smile on his lips and melts into the crowd easily, fading against the darkness.

 

Christian grinds his shoulder against Andrew’s. “Nutjob, right? But the high is fucking amazing.”

 

Andrew spins and digs his fingers hard into the bones of Christian's shoulder and smiles up at him. “If you want to touch me you better be willing to take what comes with it.”

 

Christian's eyes go wide, wide, wide and Andrew pats him on the back.  _ Careful what you wish for,  _ he thinks, and draws himself into the sea of warm bodies.

 

*

  
  


When he shakes out his coat in his room the packet of pills tumbles out followed by folded card.

 

He opens it to find two tarot cards, the magician and the page of swords. On the magician is scrawled,  _ this one told me to come here.  _ On the other,  _ this one is why. _

 

Andrew takes out a pill and thinks about sleeping without dreaming anything of the past.

 

He doesn't dream anything at all.

 

*

 

Kevin fixates on Neil. Andrew can see that Kevin can taste the repressed energy simmering under the kid’s skin. Can recognise his own shattered likeness in his quick legs and bruised hands.

 

Kevin fixates on Neil and Andrew hangs around them both like a dark shadow, eating up the light.

 

(Andrew takes another of Ronan's pills that morning out of a morbid curiosity, sure it will leave him slumped unconscious beside the goalpost, dark and dreamless and blissful.)

 

(Andrew takes a pill that morning and everything around him is buzzing alive and he is feeding off the brightness and too focused to shy away from it.)

 

Neil watches him, when Kevin is rambling on, nostrils flaring. He has a different kind of vibration. Measured and controlled and falsified. One blue aura blanketing a deep red one. 

 

(Kevin is a flaring yellow, deep like a bruise. This seems like something he has always known, has always been chasing along the edge of his vision. The intermingling is new, though, the red on the edge, something shared that he does not understand and he tells himself over and over he does not want to.)

 

He lets himself, against better judgement, blink in and out of focus, riding the bright numbness instead of counting out their movements. Instead of scrutinizing the boy who fell from the sky and into their burrow, fully formed and half real.

 

Kevin works Neil harder than he can handle, knocks him across the court and sending the colours spiralling across Andrew's vision. He is close to laughing, once when Neil ends up on his knees with a mouthful of grass, but pulls back and keeps the slip locked up behind his scowl.

 

Neil pulls himself up and throws himself back at Kevin, rocks him too hard, and one slight twist in either of their bodies could snap ligaments.

 

Andrew misses the part where he runs, only blinks and finds himself pressing Neil back into the filth. “Careful,” he says, feeling his way around the word.

 

(He does not take notice of his own aura of white melting into Neil's. It takes all the focus he has to swallow back the desire to keep his hands where they are, to touch the bruises, the press his knuckles cooly into them and watch the reaction.)

 

Kevin pulls him back with a clap on the shoulder and Neil looks at him in that same way he always does, recognising the shadows under his eyes, like against like.

 

Andrew shakes himself down, all the colour fading, and Kevin takes mere moments to pick up his racquet again, floodlights in his eyes.

  
  


*

 

Ronan is waiting for him, a future spectre in the alleyway behind the club, drinking in the night air like whisky. He jumps when Andrew sidles up beside him, barely disturbing the air with his silence. Ronan mutters the sign of the cross under his breath before he acknowledges Andrew with a nod.

 

It makes him smile almost uncomfortably. “Sometimes you remind me of a friend of mine.”

 

He catalogues the mirthful smile, the way Ronan clicks his tongue behind his teeth and brushes his hand across his shorn head. “Funny, you remind me of someone I killed.”

 

Ronan’s eyes are bright when he says it, wild and ill-fitting in the sleek barrenness of the city. He offers Andrew the last drag of his cigarette like a test of character.

 

“Hilarious,” Andrew days after a long inhale, flicking ash at Ronan's shoes. “Do you think Jesus would be laughing, though?”

 

Ronan pushes himself off the wall and lets his extra height make him titanic, catching the streetlight on the edge of his profile, smile like a dagger. “I think he'd be fucking rolling.”

 

The silence between them is never quite uneasy. Like they each know the other has carried silence around them as a plate of armour and now it is as close as skin. Still, Ronan seems to have trouble staying still for too long because his leg jitters against the wall, wild movements humming under his skin, always.

 

He coughs, clearing the last of the smoke from his lungs. “I'm not a dealer. I'm pretty much just stealing the schtick of an old ghost I used to know.”

 

“The one you killed?” Andrew asks.  _ The one that reminds you of me. _

 

Ronan taps his nose. “Maybe I’m here for a higher purpose,” he says, getting close enough to Andrew that the warmth from their bodies mingles. He is very careful not to touch. “Maybe I’m your guardian angel.”

 

Andrew looks up at Ronan, meets his shadowed eyes. “Maybe you should fuck off.”

 

Ronan winks and rolls his neck back, throat bared and smooth. “As you wish.”

 

Ronan pulls back sharply, the motion chilling Andrew's skin, though nothing so much as quivers. “You won't be this bright eyed and bushy tailed forever, kid.”

 

Ronan smiles at him. Small, quick, disturbingly naked. Lying. “It's sweet that you want to protect my innocence.”

 

He walks away, turning into a street he doesn't belong in. Andrew lets Christian sneak him drinks until he can't feel his skin anymore.

  
  


*

 

When he reaches for the pills there are two more cards there. The Ten of Swords and Strength.

 

He feels himself tense, muscles in his neck bunching. No one disturbs his space. No one with sound mind knows his disposition and still wants to go rifling through the things even he wants kept secret.

 

There's a phone number on the outer edge of the Ten of Swords. 

 

He calls it with blood roaring in his ears so loud he almost misses the answerphone message.

 

_ This is 555-clap-if-you-believe, please leave your message after the tone. _

  
  


*

 

Renee trades him her latest paperback for his latest dirty secret.

 

She sits at the far end of the row of orange plastic chairs, and he sits one row below, watching Kevin push past a filthy hangover and a filthier bloody knee.

 

“A murderous witchboy is certainly new,” she says, not smiling and staring out toward the setting sun. Her hands are fidgeting on the seat, nails clicking against the plastic. He knows she wants something to push her.

 

“I'm broadening my horizons,” he says, rather than,  _ He’s not mine so don't you worry,  _ or  _ you better let Allison know she has competition for the world's biggest fucking narcissist.  _

 

She lowers the sunglasses stolen from Dan to the very tip of her nose to look at him unobscured. “Do you want to hurt him?”

 

“I'm not sure that I can.”  _ I'm not sure that I already haven't. _

 

She slides the sunglasses into her pink-tipped hair. “You're a heartbreaker, Minyard.”

He sneers. “And you're a bone-breaker, Walker.”

 

She smiles at him, hands still jittery. “Fuck you.” He passes her the flask without having to ask and she doesn't thank him, just drinks deeply. The metal still quivers in her hand. “And what about Neil?”

 

His jaw locks and he counts all the ways she is more frightening than him. “The boy is a myth.”

 

“So was Icarus,” she says, leaning her head on her hand. “Don't you think he bled anyway?”

 

“Oh, I don't doubt he bleeds. I'm just looking for the wound.” 

 

Renee climbs over a row and sits beside him, her face drawn solemn the way she rarely lets the others see. “Be careful.”

 

There's a weight to it. An infinite number of things not said, what she worries he might do, things she knows he won't.

 

Andrew digs his hands deep into his sweatshirt pockets. “Fuck careful.”

 

She takes another drink from the flask, still looking his way when he feigns attention in the drills Dan is running behind them.

 

“Alright,” she says, putting the flask on his lap. “But consider this your freebie. Next time you want my help it's gonna cost you.”

 

“You're only as good as your last good deed, you know.” The metal flask is warm from her skin. He brings it to his lips but doesn't drink, just watches her over the lip of the bottle.

 

“Yeah whatever.”

  
  


*

 

Ronan deals once for the rest of the Monsters, to keep up the pretence of whatever the mirrored abyss of them is projected all over Andrew's drawn face. 

 

(They do it on the roof, a shallow parody of Andrew's past, present and uncontrollable future.) 

 

(Neil is with the others, Dan, Matt, their anti-corruption league doing what must be God’s work. Neil is with the others, on the pretence - lie - of picking out clothes that make Allison less inclined to hit him with her car. Neil is with the others where his dark eyes cannot meet Ronan’s dark eyes and wrestle the last spot of stability from the universe.)

 

Nicky slaps Ronan on the shoulder because he never learns. “This better be good shit my friend because losing fifty bucks on the sure knowledge that you were just Andy’s daydream has not endeared me to you much.”

 

Ronan winks at him. “How can you be sure that's not what I am?”

 

Nicky laughs brayingly and rakes his eyes all over Ronan's body. He bites the corner of his lip. “You know, I’ve decided I like you after all.”

 

Ronan smacks a hand down on Nicky's shoulder then slides back cooly. “Charming,” he says, catching Andrew watching him and smiling brightly. “Andrew, your family are a fucking delight. What's your excuse?”

 

Aaron whistles under his breath and raises his eyebrows at his brother.

 

Andrew is not a fan of predictability. He laughs, and it's dark and throaty, like he's not used to the sound. The rest of them certainly aren't. “Fuck off, Ronan.”

 

Nicky elbows Ronan in the ribs and only Andrew sees how he flinches, how his fists draw in so quickly, like a snake in recoil. Nicky laughs on, not quite oblivious, but affable, the art of uncaring, says, “You really are magic, aren't you?” 

 

And Ronan only shakes his head, lights up a cigarette and wanders to the edge of the rooftop. After a moment, when Kevin has wrestled back some attention, Andrew slinks after him, holding in the smoke of his own cigarette too long and settling into the fog that cuts them off from the world.

 

Ronan tilts his head, almost like he means to rest it on Andrew's shoulder, but never reaching past the gulf. “When am I going to meet this friend I remind you so much of?”

 

He thinks,  _ I’ll never let Neil touch you.  _ He says, “Renee is around. She's the kindest person I know. She’d slit your throat in a second.”

 

Ronan smiles and touches the chain at his throat, a cross and a small blue crystal point hanging from it. “My kind of girl.” He tips his head back to the cloudy sky. “You ever love someone so much that you would kill the sky for them? Just break the fucking bones of everyone who dared to touch them before you got there?”

 

The smoke burns the back of Andrew's throat. He needs to cut back. All it does is kill him quicker. 

 

(All they do is talk and smoke and inch closer to death.)

 

“I don't like to entertain people or feelings.” He snuffs the cigarette out in the cement only half smoked.

 

Ronan looks out over the pitch, then over his shoulder where Kevin is stood slightly apart from Nicky and Aaron, holding a clear plastic bottle not filled with water. “Liar.”

  
  


*

 

He takes the last pill and thinks about dreaming, closing his eyes and lying in the middle of the court.

 

The blackness swells and then he is there, his hands suddenly softer than before, but he's not younger. He knows that much. Slowly the black unfolds into a field of flowers, some thin, small trees hardly to his knees roll out all around him, bright, new, but older than anything.

 

“It's rebuilding itself here. After the war.” Ronan appears, a raven settled on his shoulder. “I'm supposed to protect it, but it keeps leading me to new distractions.” 

 

The bird eyes Andrew and as though speaking a language beyond his comprehension mutters something in Ronan’s ear that makes him laugh quietly.

 

“I've never had much luck with ravens,” Andrew says, still fascinated by his hands, their lack of scars, their sudden gentleness.

 

Ronan grins at him. “They're little monsters. But they'll follow you gladly and keep watch on you always. These fuckers will follow you straight to the afterlife.” 

 

Andrew asks if that's what this is.

 

Ronan very carefully touches his hand, touches the smoothness of them. He gets into his knees and looks up at him, touching the skin that should be healed over but is instead fresh and undamaged.

 

(He realises now that they are both naked, that when Ronan's mouth touches his knees they should shake and he should push away. He also realises that in this place, his skin is as the trees, is as the grass, is as the sky and it couldn't possibly matter what is exposed.)

 

Ronan touches his hipbone with his teeth, drags his mouth across there leaving trails of warmth behind that fill up his body like gasoline, then sits back on his heels.

 

Andrew puts his hand on Ronan's forehead like a priest absolving sin. “You're not real, are you?”

 

Ronan smiles like he did the first time, exposing his teeth in a brief, sharp flash. “Baby, I’m the only real thing in your dark little life.”

 

Andrew's hands flex slightly. He thinks about letting them slip further. He thinks about wrapping them around Ronan's dark throat and squeezing until his lips part like a prayer. 

 

“We can fuck, if that would help,” Ronan lets his hands - not soft like Andrew's have become but rough and earthy as ever. “I can't kiss you, though. Call me Julia Roberts but I made a promise to someone I wouldn't get the name of anyone I kissed on the road. It's just luck that loopholes make him laugh. And it doesn't count here, anyway.”

 

“Because it's a dream?” Andrew isn't sure that makes a difference, with Ronan. He scrapes his fingernails down Ronan's scalp, watching his eyes close slowly.

 

“What gave you that idea?” The sky flashes dark for a moment, and despite the hot sun, rain spills out over them both. “Okay, maybe he doesn't find it that funny.” He laughs again and the rain becomes lighter, the sky a pale shade of pink. Ronan keeps his hands around Andrew's hips, digging his thumbs into the bone and massaging until Andrew thinks his legs might give out beneath him.

 

Andrew hisses and pulls Ronan back by the shoulders. “Don't play with fire, kid.”

 

Ronan throws himself back into the grass, sharp angles and shadows. “Don't flatter yourself. I'm already in love with an inferno. You don't come close.”

 

Andrew throws himself down on top of Ronan, arms bracketed on either side of his head, breathing harshly into his collarbone, mirroring Ronan's path with his teeth indenting the skin. “This is my dream, Ronan, you're only starring in it.”

 

Ronan scrapes his nails down Andrew's spine as he moves, wiping off the raindrops  as quickly as they settle. “I hope you don't wake up too soon, then,” he whispers.

 

Andrew screws his eyes shut.

  
  
  


*

  
  


Neil walks past them on the way to Betty’s office, catching he and Renee post-session.

 

They aren't speaking, but Renee looks at him when she sees Neil coming. The shiner makes her eyes look brighter, more lucid than ever. He tilts his head at her and keeps walking, nodding when Neil gets closer.

  
He moves out, lets their shoulders brush when they pass one another. Neil looks back at him, mouth open on some half formed response but Andrew smiles at him over his shoulder, all slow and teeth, and Neil shuts his mouth. He watches Renee limp and Andrew shoulder her weight, and Andrew watches him right back.

**Author's Note:**

> come chat with me on tumblr [@bohemicns](https://) if you feel so inclined


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